11 Comments Add your own

• 1. Q Jordon  |  July 14th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

  Even as a Democrat, I could see that Reaganomics was over when the Neo-Cons took office. All one had to do is look at how G.W. Bush handled Texas during his governorship, it was dismal. For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone could have voted for this man after seeing what he did to Texas.

  The willingness to spend government money freely on political agendas without the concern of the deficit is a problem with both the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs, the difference is the liberals have been doing it for decades.

  Now, we see the military industrial complex being given free reign on low bid, and in some cases - no bid contracts that are clearly not in the best interest of the nation.

  At least with Reagan, he took a certain amount of pride in keeping the deficit down to a degree. And yet, under the past three Republican Presidents, the deficit has went up by more than seventy percent. So, perhaps, Reaganomics was just as much a sham as what we are seeing and experiencing now.

• 2. Menlo Bob  |  July 15th, 2008 at 2:09 am

  Jordon–Just the other day Applesauce wanted you to believe that Reagan never vetoed a spending bill. I’d expect that he’d have you believe that Reaganomics was all about spending increases and that George Bush was into the exact same thing. Well throwing money at the economic stimulus doesn’t help that impression.

  Credit Clinton for holding the line on spending and for signing the Republican congress’ welfare reform act. Too bad he couldn’t get excited about killing Osama bin Laden. Maybe then we’d have a different economic situation.

• 3. Pat Cunningham  |  July 15th, 2008 at 7:20 am

  Bob: I’ve already conceded — and graciously so, if I say so myself — that I was in error in saying that Reagan vetoed no spending bills. What I should have said is that inflation-adjusted spending under Reagan increased by 7 percent, which hardly suggests fiscal conservatism. Moreover, deficit spending soared on his watch. By the way, I’m still wondering why Republicans no longer push for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We used to hear about that all the time. Nowadays, nary a peep.

• 4. Craig Knauss  |  July 15th, 2008 at 8:41 am

  Jordon and Bob,

  You’re both wrong on some points. First, Reagan campaigned against Jimmy Carter’s “excessive” $42B deficit, even though it was over $60B when Carter took over from Nixon/Ford. Reagan promptly pushed the deficit to over $100B. It was something like $360B when he left office. His economic plan was to increase expenditures and reduce revenues. That’s why his budget director, David Stockman quit in disgust and his VP, George Bush I, called it “Voodoo Economics”.

  Clinton did hold the line on spending and in fact, actually reduced the national debt a bit. He also produced the first balanced budget in over 30 years. But Bob, don’t blame him for Osama bin Laden. He inherited that problem from Reagan and Bush I. bin Laden was a member of the Mujahadeen, that we had been supporting since late in Carter’s term. Both Reagan and Bush I had been warned repeatedly that Osama bin Laden was becoming too radical and couldn’t be trusted anymore. Neither listened. They both had numerous chances to “fix” the problem, but did nothing. When Clinton took over, the new Taliban government protected him and refused to turn him over to us. The Pakistanis didn’t help much either, especially since that’s where the Taliban originated.

• 5. Menlo Bob  |  July 15th, 2008 at 9:24 am

  “But Bob, don’t blame him for Osama bin Laden. He inherited that problem from Reagan and Bush…”

  Huh? So he had no choice but to pass it along to the next guy? Where else will this line of reasoning take us?

• 6. Craig Knauss  |  July 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

  Bob,

  You didn’t criticize Reagan and Bush, Sr. for doing nothing about bin Laden. Why criticize Clinton? Bill Clinton wasn’t the one giving the Mujahadeen guns, money, and Stinger missiles. And while your two heroes had “advisors” over there, they could have had the problem fixed (before the Taliban took over). They had the best opportunity to do something. They didn’t. So all of a sudden it becomes Clinton’s fault. Where does that line of reasoning take us? Your blame-thrower is working great.

• 7. echo4charlie  |  July 15th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

  A lot of people helped to make propel Osama Bin Laden. The problem is, nobody took him seriously, and could anticipate the propulsion of radical Islam.

  I was a fan of President Regan, and President George H.W. Bush. But, yes, they did help enable Bin Laden. President Clinton promptly cut military spending, and that took hold fast, and took immediate effect. I was in the Middle East in the early/mid 90’s, and was eating 2 MREs (Meal: Ready To Eat) a day instead of three. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was. Also, our ammo for training was cut significantly, so we “dry fired” for training. We also had sub-par gear that we worked hard to maintain, make it last, and keep it effective.

  Where I see President Clinton misstepping, besides military budget cuts (and all that it entailed), is that Osama Bin Laden orchastrated both an attack on the World Trade Center and The USS Cole in the early and mid 90s (respectively), and we did nothing to stop him. What makes President Clinton’s scenario different than the previous twp presidents’ is that he was now a credible and proven threat, and the evidence of his intention and potential became verifiable through the violence he propagated during President Clinton’s term. And, I don’t believe that President Clinton, nor congress, paid it the attention that we now can easily see that it deserved.

  We are witnessing the death of Reaganomics, but moreso of our economy and our standing as a world power.

• 8. Craig Knauss  |  July 15th, 2008 at 5:52 pm

  Osama bin Laden was a credible threat long before Clinton was elected. Clinton’s predessesors were advised (warned) repeatedly that he was becoming too radical and couldn’t be trusted. Reagan was only concerned with getting the Russians out of Afghanistan. Bush Sr. was friends with the bin Laden family and, I guess, thought that they would rein in their wayward son. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they made a point of protecting their “holy warrior” from the U.S. The Taliban was in power before Clinton took office and rebuked every attempt to capture him. The only option would have been an unprovoked attack on Afghanistan. Clinton could have done more about bin Laden, but Reagan and Bush Sr. could have done a LOT more. And what would we have done to stop bin Laden’s two earlier attacks? If it was so easy, then why didn’t we stop the second WTC attack? He was a known terrorist by then. Unfortunately, our new administration was only worried about Saddam Hussein, who by the way, did NOT attack us.

• 9. Echo4charlie  |  July 15th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

  I don’t disagree. A string of leaders just let him slip through. The thing that confuses me most is why, now, we can’t find a 7-foot Arab dragging a dialysis machine around the mountains. Well, now we have to see where things go in Iran, which was anther focal point in Reganomics.

• 10. Craig Knauss  |  July 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

  And we shouldn’t forget just how Reagan spent money on the military. For example, he spent $350 million dollars on each of four 40 year old battleships, used them for only two years, and then parked them again. Did we really get $1.4 B worth of good from that? He bought 100 B-1 bombers at about $200 M apiece. But they only bought one bomb loader and it takes 8 hours to load each plane or a whole month to load the entire fleet. But at least six of them have already crashed, so fewer planes to load. I think it was the Bradley Fighting Vehicle that couldn’t hit a stationary target, let alone a moving one. Reagan wanted a 600 ship navy, because 600 was a nice, round number. And I wish I knew how much we spent on his Star Wars debacle and the Midget Man missile. We were buying $500 toilet seats and foot soldiers didn’t have ammo. The only part of our country that was more secure was the finances of the defense contractors.

• 11. echo4charlie  |  July 16th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

  I hate to say it, but, America is on the ropes. We’re circling around bankruptcy, and the worst is still yet to come before we get better.

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